WHAT IS THE BEST AVAILABE NEW SMARTFONE ?

Though Apple would love consumers to think that way, an iPhone battery
can be consumer replaced. See the following link:

http://www.ipodbatterydepot.com/iphone.asp?en=google&pl=&no=3&n=specificmatch&at=3-ipodbatteries&ad=3.6&gclid=CN7z5tr92qwCFRFV7Aod_TMfDw

Newer tech...

The smart phones can do email and web browsing and they can run applications which you'd have to see to believe in many cases. They can check prices with bar-codes in stores, pull up car-fax sheets from the bar-coded VIN numbers in newer cars, tell you how to shoot the elk 600 meters off at a 13-degree down angle and a 12 mph wind, tell you which stars and planets you're pointing them at, take dictation from voice using Dragon software for gadgets, do gps things, and there's almost no end to it.

Quote:

Consider eliminating landline -
Another thing to consider is eliminating your landline. I'm disabled and had to think long and hard, but it's been 10 yrs since I had a landline. You may feel differently as some people like the idea of not having to rely on satellite tech variability to make your connection. Statistically the amount of uptime availability is pretty similar but not the same - depending on your area and carrier. I've been happiest with my carrier which is Verizon. Never been in an emergency and not had access. the storm that took out cell phone service coincidentally also took out landline. FWIW, cellphone came back within 24 hr and landline took 2 days.

Here is where we part ways. I don't believe anyone who is even relatively homebound should eliminate their landline completely. I will now explain why.

Last December there was a problem with the local tower that most of my cell calls transmit through. At first I had had clicking sounds in a number of calls then there came that dreaded moment when there was no phone service.

Without going into extreme details as it is nobody's business, I am at times incapacitated in my abilities to get outside. If I fall, I cannot always get back up on my own. I carry the cell with me at all times, additionally I have the landline with 2 units hooked up.

At the time the cell went out, I was in a physical downturn, it was additionally late in the day. My neighbors on the floor were not around. The couple in 1 unit were on vacation somewhere, the gentleman across the hall was in his upstate house, the other unit was waiting to be rented. I needed the landline to contact the cellphone provider, they were able to switch my connecting tower. Service was responded restored soon after. Without the landline I would have been in a dangerous spot. The door was locked, and I cannot reach the lock from the floor, so I couldn't even get into the hallway and shout for help, which I did manage once after taking a fall just after unlocking the door when prepearing to head outside. Unable to stand, I managed to open the door and shift outside on my rear over to the stairs.

Additionally, landlines work even when power goes out. A cellphone, while it will last a while, needs the benefit of recharging and with no power, that can't happen unless of course you have a generator,which I don't.

This was the only time AT&T failed, I have had perfect service since, and even prior to that, only a handful of dropped calls, all of which I redialed, was reconstituted, and didn't have more trouble in my continued conversation with the person with whom I'd had an interrupted call. Verizon and Sprint suck in this area. One corner a few blocks from here is a funny place. It's a Sprint and Verizon dead spot. Calls drop there all the time, my AT&T doesn't. It's comical watching people walk through, yapping away and then a few feet later staring at their phone in confusion.

Anyways, my point is, I don't believe a landline should be dropped. Better to get the lowest cost plan and have the extra spot of security.

Ragman wrote:

Though Apple would love consumers to think that way, an iPhone battery
can be consumer replaced. See the following link:

http://www.ipodbatterydepot.com/iphone.asp?en=google&pl=&no=3&n=specificmatch&at=3-ipodbatteries&ad=3.6&gclid=CN7z5tr92qwCFRFV7Aod_TMfDw

Any idea how long thay last??

The last one that I had, a Motorola i95,
lasted very few hours; I needed to carry it OFF,
using it only for outgoing calls, unless by appointment,
I was expecting an incoming call.





David

Smartphones in general seem to be huge power hogs, whether iphone or android it looks to be quite common to have to recharge them just about every day. It's the display, and the fact that a lot of apps check the link periodically for updates, whether you ask them to or not.

Remember the low prices for most of them are because they prices are heavily subsidized, since you get locked into a two year contract with a heavy termination fee if you cancel before then.

Verizon according to many reports is said to have the best sound quality and coverage. AT&T less so. Sprint's generally okay but not great sound and somewhat spotty coverage.

I know a lot of people with iPhone and a lot of them are fanatically for it, and the apps are really neat--there's an ocarina one, where you blow into the microphone and you can play a scale by touching the marked spots on the display--I understand there's an iPhone-playing"orchestra" (in San Francisco, naturally). This probably wouldn't interest you, David, but there's this neat little so-called "square" that you plug into the headphone jack that will let you swipe credit cards. They process the card, charge I think it's 1.7%, deposit it in your account, and send you an email. Charge people a buck to pat your dog as you walk it, and you can clear a profit.

Most of the carriers have limits on how much you can use the net before incurring additional fees, often steep. Most of the majors seem to cap it at 2GB to 5GB per month. Sprint is still unlimited data but they throttle down your download speed after 2.5GB.

If you don't use your phone a lot, Virgin Mobile's no-contract phones start at $35/month for "unlimited" data (they buy their time from Sprint) and 300minutes of phone per month, to $50 for unlimited phone and data. Places like Radio Shack or Best Boy have Virgin phones on sale periodically for around $100 or less (I'd been looking for awhile and got an Android LG Optimus for $50, good reviews, on Black Friday, since I'd been figuring on trying smartphones out and had a substantial credit built up with them). You can see if you like what they do without getting locked into a substantial outlay if you don't like it.

iPhone mostly on Verizon and ATT, Android on other carriers.

If you google "reviews of [make and model of phone]" or "reviews of [carrier]"
you can see what people think of a particular phone or service. Every phone or carrier is going to have some negative reviews--look at the overall balance, and whether a particular phone seems to have a lot of complaints about the same thing.

Oh, took me about a half hour to activate the LG, with a very patient Virgin customer service woman in India, because it has a virtual keyboard, which is very sensitive until you figure out how to use it and develop the right touch, and my fingers aren't the smallest. They do much more than my previous clamshell one, and it can take a lot of poking around to find something and figure out how to use it (and the damned manual shows all the buttons you push to get it to do what you want, but the pictures of the buttons are all about 1/8 inch across, so I have to use a magnifying glass to read the damned icon on the button, which kind of impedes progress.)

David, I think most smartphones now have cameras, varying between about 3megapixels and 8, and MP3 players, and some form of videocamera, and a slot for additional memory, usually a micro SDHC card, I think you can generally use a card with up to 32 GB (16GB cards run from about $15 to $30 depending on specs)/ A 32GB card would let you store somewhere around 1200 CDs of music in MP3 format, or a LOT of photos or video. Compare capacities on phones that interest you. Cellphone pix and video are kind of revolutionizing news and civic processes--phone video of demonstrations and military/police reaction were vital in the success of several of the Arab Springs in the Mideast this year.

With your lawyerly orientation, David, you might find this interesting. A Texas car dealer allegedly had a friend lend him a million dollars, with which he went out and bought a Bugatti Veyron, perhaps the rarest and most coveted supercar in the world. He insured it for $2 million as a collectible. A couple weeks after he bought it, he drove the car into the bay, in about 3 feet of water, allegedly to avoid a pelican, and left the motor running as it and he sat there in the water, which destroyed the engine. He claimed the $2 million.

But two car freaks had been pacing him on a parallel highway and cellphone videoing him and salivating about the car. Their comments, "That'll be mine one day", turn to "Oh, Oh ****" as he drives off the road into the water. They posted the video. Looking at it, I see no pelican, no brake lights, no slowing down, no abrupt swerve off the road, just a pretty smooth sweep into the water. The guy is being sued for insurance fraud.

Never know when your phone's gonna capture something very surprising.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NJmB1F2mdE[/youtube]